TerraForm Power Buys $350M in Wind Farms From Atlantic Power to Feed Its YieldCo

Stephen Lacey is the Editor-in-Chief of Greentech Media. He manages a team of writers focused on solar, storage, efficiency, mobility, and grid modernization. He is producer/host of The Energy Gang and Interchange podcasts, two leading interview and analysis shows on the business of energy and cleantech.

Bloomberg: Atlantic Power in $350 Million Wind-Farm Deal With TerraForm

Atlantic Power Corp. agreed to sell its wind farms to TerraForm Power Inc. for $350 million, giving the company a cash injection after it failed to find a buyer last year.

The five operating wind farms in Idaho and Oklahoma can produce as much as 521 megawatts of electricity and include contracts to sell their output to utilities with an average life of 18 years, Beltsville, Maryland-based TerraForm said in a statement Wednesday.

The onus for restoring the oil price back to an equilibrium lies squarely on the shoulders of countries like the U.S. and not on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a top Goldman Sachs analyst told CNBC.

Michele Della Vigna, head of European energy research at Goldman Sachs, said non-OPEC oil producers had created the oversupply in the market which has weighed on prices.

"I think the market has realized that where we need to find the adjustment is onshore U.S. and that's where the market is focused," he told CNBC Thursday.

Gizmodo: This Supercapacitor Is Paper-Thin, Stores Energy As Well As a Battery

A team of researchers from UCLA Berkeley has developed a new supercapacitor which is paper-thin, super-fast to charge and can match batteries with its energy storage density.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers explain how they've developed the supercapacitor. Using laser-scribed graphene in combination with manganese-dioxide, the team has produced a supercapacitor which is one-fifth the thickness of a sheet of paper.

Oncor’s grand plan for grid-integrated battery storage may have been a few years ahead of its time.

The Dallas utility made a bold proclamation last year that it would someday have thousands of megawatts of batteries on the grid that could store electricity and release it when there’s demand.

CEO Bob Shapard said in November that the odds would be against them to get any policy changes passed this legislative session. After all, the company faces opposition from its own sister company, the power generator Luminant. That’s certainly proven true as no lawmakers filed a bill during this legislative session.

Vice News: The Georgia Legislature Just Pulled the Plug on Electric Cars

A generous state tax break has helped make Georgia the No. 2 state for electric vehicles, and made Atlanta the top market for the compact Nissan Leaf. Both the Leaf and the higher-end Tesla sedans are now common sights in and around metro Atlanta, where more than 10,500 EVs are registered.

But this year, Georgia lawmakers needed to raise nearly $1 billion to patch up crumbling roads, highways, and bridges. So they are pulling the plug on that $5,000 tax credit -- a move budget analysts say will contribute $66 million to the state's coffers in 2016 and nearly $190 million by 2020.